But the crucial factor has always been its affordability as Parle-G’s market is extremely price-sensitive and it is perceived as a value-for-money buy. Of course, Parle-G delivers on taste and nutrition and sometimes even works as a substitute for a meal or in keeping the customer mentally alert. For the customer, digging into a pack of Parle-G has always been about several, quite different things. It stood out in every way, setting itself apart from biscuits sold in jars. Large-scale branding exercises helped tell consumers how Parle-G was ‘often imitated, never equalled’. In 1982, Parle Gluco became Parle-G but the girl on its packaging remained constant along with other elements such as the font used for the brand lettering and the white and yellow stripes, though subsequently the stripes changed from horizontal to vertical and then to slanting. Created as an illustration by Maganlal Dahiya – a creative professional at Parle’s advertising agency Everest Brand Solutions – the Parle girl with her chubby cheeks and large eyes, and wearing a white dress (which, incidentally, she hasn’t changed out of in decades), was instantly liked by mothers and kids alike. The need for a distinguishing factor prompted the Parle girl to make her first appearance.

Undiscerning customers would simply walk into shops asking for glucose biscuits, which had become a generic category among biscuits. In the 1960s, by the time Britannia launched a rival glucose biscuit – Glucose D – there were already a number of other smaller players in the market, many producing glucose biscuits and some of them even producing knockoffs of Parle Gluco. Britannia, the other Indian biscuit-maker was based in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and while they were a name to reckon with in the eastern part of India, they did not manufacture glucose biscuits.

They were marketed as an affordable source of nourishment, and that is the positioning that Parle has more or less stuck to for decades.ĭuring the British Raj, the other biscuits available were expensive – mainly imported brands like Jacob’s Cream Crackers from United Biscuits, Huntly & Palmers biscuits and Glaxo glucose biscuit. Initially, they produced military-grade biscuits to supply to the British Army fighting in World War II, but eventually the Parle Gluco biscuits were also manufactured for local consumption. Parle Gluco came into existence around 1939, about a decade after the Parle factory in Vile Parle in Mumbai (that’s where the company’s name was derived from) began producing confectionery like boiled sweets. Parle-G, or Parle Gluco, comes from Parle Products, which owns other biscuit brands like Monaco and KrackJack as well as confectionery brands like Melody, Mango Bite, Poppins and Kismi, among others. Whatever the age, education or mother tongue of the customer, he or she can identify the biscuit pack they want simply because of the familiar child on it.

What is important is the sweet brilliance of Parle-G’s branding and marketing. (Really? We’ve spent a lifetime speculating on an illustration?)īut that’s not the important thing here. Well, it turns out that the Parle-G girl is not a real girl at all, but an illustration created in the 1960s by the company’s advertising agency, Everest Brand Solutions. ‘Finally revealed: Parle-G girl badi ho kar Airtel 4G girl ban gayi hai.’ ‘Just revealed: the Parle-G girl is Gunjan Gudaniya.’ ‘Revealed: The Parle-G girl is Sudha Murthy.’ Such is the curiosity inspired by the girl that question answer sites are, in fact, crawling with detectives claiming to possess definite knowledge of her identity.

Parle g biscuit baby name